BACK ON THE VENGENCE TRAIL

Last year, I wrote a blog on the theme of cinematic vengeance inspired by two movies, Jodie Foster's The Brave One and Charles Bronson's Death Wish .

This past weekend Collette and I watched two movies that once again explored this theme of vengeance, from two very different perspectives. The movies were Kevin Bacon's Death Sentence from 2007 and Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino from last year. These are both Hollywood movies, and both of them are concerned with a lone, male character who goes on the vengeance trail against a group of highly armed bad guys. In both movies, the bad guys are gangs of young men, street gangs if you will.

There the similarities pretty much end. Death Sentence is a straight ahead Hollywood vengeance flick very much in the mold of Death Wish. It was, in fact, written by Brian Garfield, the author who penned the original Death Wish. Garfield began his career as an author of Western novels, not so surprising really. Vengeance is a mainstay theme of Western fiction, both printed word and movies. Death Wish the film makes reference to this Old West myth. Bronson, as New Yorker Paul Kerzey, goes to New Mexico for business, where his client quickly immerses him in a kind of cowboy code mentality, including teaching him how to shoot a six gun. This is all before the act of violence, back home, that sends Bronson down the vengeance trail.


Death Sentence does not make any such overt reference to the cowboy code, but there are several similarities to Death Wish. Bronson's character was an upper middle class architect, Kevin Bacon's character is a high level executive with a fortune 500 company. Both men become the victims of younger, lower class, low (or zero) income men. Single men. Criminals, yes, but the contrast seems to be these young single men, no family, no jobs, no significant possessions, literally attacking these older, more well established men. In both movies, the main characters themselves are not the the prime victims of the initial attacks. It's their families that are attacked, their children. In Death Wish, Bronson's wife and daughter are attacked. In Death Sentence, it's Bacon's son. Later, his wife and other son become victims.

Death Wish throws Bronson into the role of a vigilante, seeking out criminals in the streets of NYC and dispatching them. In Death Sentence, Kevin Bacon focuses his vengeance on the members of the gang who killed his son. This is indeed Old West stuff. Instead of bringing strangers to justice, individually targeting the varmints who gunned down your kin. I think this concept is a much more satisfying fantasy for a lot of people. I've had many conversations with men when, after reading some horrific news report about a child molested or murdered by strangers, the dad I'm talking to declares something like: "If that was my child, I'd hunt that bastard down and castrate him/kill him/rip out his eyes and piss on his brains .." whatever the invective of the day may be. Death Sentence taps into this personal aspect of the vengeance myth .. I was going to say "macho" instead of personal but I've heard moms utter the same kind of sentiments.


To me, the main differences between Death Wish and Death Sentence, is indeed this "personalized" approach to the vengeance. Charles Bronson is a vigilante that becomes the media darling of his city. Kevin Bacon is a wounded dad hunting down the exact, individual criminals who killed his family. Death Wish was released in 1974, Death Sentence in 2007. Is this some kind of sign of the times? Have we soured on the concept of someone taking society's justice into their own hands, or is this simply an offshoot of the "nesting" craze; I care more about my family than I do the bigger, more complex, scarier world.

In The Brave One, although Jodie Foster eventually has her showdown with the baddies who wronged her, she too takes the vigilante turn off the vengeance trail. But as I said, it was a combo kind of thing and once she dispatched the criminals, her hunting ended. Just as with Kevin Bacon, who hangs up his shotgun and automag when he takes out the last of the gang ... If there is any integrity to the story, it should end there. Bronson, as a impersonal vigilante, lived to fight on in several remakes, none of which really bare any kind of review here.

That brings us to Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, a wholly different kind of revenge movie. On the surface, this movie has some things in common with all three of the other vengeance movies; innocent people terrorized by gangs of unemployed young men, a failed "justice" system (not sure where you go to find a justice system, in North America, we live under a legal system) and a lone gunman riding in to the rescue .. but it's all really just surface. (OK, they're movies, so they are only about surface but permit me this one conceit .. ok, you have to permit me lots of conceits, I'm a Leo after all).



In Gran Torino, Clint plays a Korean war vet, disenfranchised from his family, recently, watching his old white only ghetto transformed into an Asian ghetto. His neighbours are being terrorized by an Asian street gang. The bare bones of the plot, the expectation of the story, is that as a man of action, Clints saddles up, brushes off his guns and goes after the gang. Well, to a certain extent he does. He uses his guns and his pure onery power of character to intimidate the gang .. which leads them to escalate their violence against the neighbours. Same thing occurs in Death Sentence; as Bacon begins hunting the gang down, they turn their vengeance on his family.

In Gran Torino, as part of the gang's retribution, they rape the young girl with whom Clint has started a friendship. This is a common theme in these vengeance movies. In Death Wish, Bronson's wife and daughter are "violated" by the bad guys and it's this act that sets him on the vengeance trail; avenging the honour of the women folk. Again, Death Sentence takes a slightly more politically correct stance, it's the murder of Kevin Bacon's son that starts the bloodshed, his wife is killed later. This is sort of like the Disney/Pixar of vengeance movies, where it's all about the father and son.

Gran Torino is not really a vengeance movie. Sure, it follows the bare outlines of the genre but it is more a movie of redemption; of Clint Eastwood's character finding redemption for his past coldness to his own family and sins he committed in war, but protecting this Asian family. But he does not protect them as he would have as the Outlaw Josey Wales or the Man With No Name. He protects them by not only removing the threat (the gang members) but by doing so in a manner that leaves them free of any guilt or remorse. It's not about vengeance, or the Old West definition of justice. It's about finishing things. As Walt says in the movie "I finish things. That's what I do"

The ending of the original Death Wish and even The Brave One leaves one with a sense that, even though all the bad guys have been dispatched, things may not be finished. There are loose ends. The very act of vengeance leaves a lot of mess in its wake. If that sense is supposed to be there at the end of Death Sentence, it is far more subtle. This movie struck me as a far more straight ahead, eye for an eye, kick the bastards where they live kind of movie.

So are we becoming more mellow as movie goers? Is Hollywood sensing a tempering of societal bloodlust? Clint Eastwood's movie is a kind of anti vengeance, vengeance movie, or at least "vigilante bad, official vengeance good" Made only two years ago, Death Sentence is not anywhere near so gentle. There is irony afoot here. Clint Eastwood, who has kind of made a career riding the vengeance trail, gives us an almost gentle vengeance movie whereas Kevin Bacon, the good looking hunk with a heart, goes balls to the walls, all guns blazing.

So where will the vengeance trail next take us? I suspect that there will always be an audience for the hapless victim, who, through some judicious editing and a serious suspension of disbelief, turns into Rambo and provides all the bad guys with some biological air conditioning? Or will it be a gentler, kinder trail, where the hero plies the villain with pomegranate juice and arugula, and convince him, that all he really needs is a nice deep tissue massage ...

Saddle up.